[venachescu]

This is nerd fever dreaming conspiracy bullshit, if they were really building such scary capable war machines for the defense department they would have been bought long, long ago by a big defense contactor (and likely that would be the last we'd publically hear about it!).

Fact is that Boston Dynamics does one thing, really, really well engineered dynamic locomotion. From what I understand there's very little ML/AI to it, just really good modeling and engineering.

However, no one has quite figured out exactly where this technology will be most useful or practical in the near future. Even (maybe especially) when they were owned by Alphabet.

[clairity]

> Fact is that Boston Dynamics does one thing, really, really well engineered dynamic locomotion. From what I understand there's very little ML/AI to it, just really good modeling and engineering.

as someone who did a bit of graduate research in that area, i would debate the "really, really well engineered" part of that statement. they brute-forced the engineering and developed energetically expensive machines that were great as demos but not practical as products. compare how long one of their robots last vs any legged creature of comparable size, and the poor energetics are obvious.

i would speculate that their company was a bet that battery packs would become light enough yet have a high enough energy density that it's robots could one day become viable products, but it doesn't seem like they're winning that bet.

that's in contrast to the segway, which was a bet that computing power was fast enough to dynamically adjust and balance human scale motion with high dynamic stability. they won the technical bet, but still lost the productization bet.

[varjag]

The energetics of the robots are constrained by size, weight and power requirements of the components on the market. As such sure, mechanical walkers will always be much less energy efficient than wheeled vehicles of the same era. Their competition on the rough terrain however is not Segway but flying drones, which are much less energy efficient than walkers still.

There isn't any particular inefficiency in their walker balancing implementation.

[clairity]

but that's just it. the design presupposes an industrial mindset of motors and gears and pistons and rigid metal structures. it presupposes active control and computational power. it presupposes an unlimited energy supply, as would be found in a manufacturing plant.

but if we just look around, we find a huge array of locomoting, self-contained, relatively energy efficient beings to draw inspiration from.

for example, the tendons and muscles in your leg can return as much as 40% of the energy expended in locomoting. and your legs include passive mechanisms (like how your knee joint locks and the alignment of the cruciate ligaments inside it) to keep you mostly upright without a lot of active control.

nature has ingenious solutions to learn from and take advantage of.

[taneq]

Can you suggest another company that produces legged platforms with similar capabilities and better energy efficiency?

[rubidium]

Any mule or horse rental company.

http://www.sombrero.com/trips/hunting/

[seanp2k2]

I still don't understand the commercial value / applications of legged platforms to begin with. What are people using these for outside of hobbies, wooing government reps with deep pockets, and novelty?

[michaelt]

Humanoid robots can fit into existing environments without extensive adaption. And humans have legs.

Irrelevant in a factory, where you can adapt things as much as you like - but crucial if you envisage people sending robots to environments they don't own - like a robot carer helping Grandma go to the store.

Needless to say, the profitable applications for this aren't especially short-term, so the ROI for this research is hard to predict.

[dwighttk]

The store Grandma is going to is probably already wheelchair accessible, so a wheeled robot would work fine.

[michaelt]

I'm sure that's the case where you live, but where I live our public transport isn't 100% disabled-accessible.

If you prefer, you can substitute "Like a robot delivery driver, who must deliver to flats without lifts" or "Like a robot cop, chasing truant teens through a mall" [1]

[1] http://pbfcomics.com/comics/truancy-bot/

[stevenwoo]

They briefly convinced the Army/Marines that they could make electric/hydraulic mules to assist soldiers in carrying their gear in terrain without roads. But they were too loud - at that point, might as well insert troops/material by helicopter or use horses/mules. http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/...

[taneq]

Seems like a classic case of poorly chosen requirements. Someone specced a robotic mule with such-and-such range, carrying capacity and features, and forgot to add 'also must be quieter than weed whacker'.

[daveguy]

Stairs? Or any other rough terrain where wheels are insufficient.

A robotics mentor once told me "just use bigger wheels" for rough terrain rather than legs and fancy control algorithms. But stairs are particularly difficult for wheels. House bots will almost certainly need legs to maximize utility. Unless they are so cheap you can get one for every surface.

[greg7mdp]

> wheels are insufficient

Tell that to these guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1apqfrJYwk. I think one day we have have two wheeled robots with these kind of capability.

[daveguy]

That is badass. And energy intensive. I do think we will have legged/wheel hybrids rolling for efficiency and walking/hopping/etc for the difficult parts. He was certainly using his legs to perform those maneuvers. Wheels only can't bounce up. Wheelies, but not the hopping part. Wheelies + AWD may do it though. Good perspective. Thank you.

[namlem]

You mean like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xvqQeoA8c

[jacquesm]

It's hard to change the stance on a wheeled vehicle, I think that agriculture might be one domain where a legged platform could develop an advantage (if it were sufficiently energy efficient to begin with, wheels really are the greatest human invention).

[jononor]

Legged for agriculture, to handle uneven terrain? Outside of reforestation, I don't see how it can be a significant advantage? In soil-based growing, one needs to maintain the soil/ground and making/keeping it flat becomes a relatively minor point. For soil-less (hydroponics etc), I'd expect the whole 'field' to be automated, possibly with the produce moving instead of moving to the produce. This how modern salad farming happens for instance.

[jacquesm]

> Legged for agriculture, to handle uneven terrain?

That's one, and also a much smaller footprint than a wheeled vehicle.

> This how modern salad farming happens for instance.

And mushrooms too.

Mushrooms too.

[hitekker]

One thing I keep in mind is that handwaving, overly dismissive criticisms tend to stem from the need to feel superior rather than actual shortcomings of the product.

[TeMPOraL]

Maybe there's still merit to BD's approach. The rule is: first make it work, then make it good, then make it fast (i.e. optimize). It's probably easier to find plenty of ways to incrementally improve on a working platform than to dream up those improvements completely from scratch.

[sharemywin]

To me though a better approach would be:

1. wheeled sidewalk robots. 2. wheeled robot with arms 3. walking robot.

Still incremental just have sellable robots the whole time.

[namlem]

Their newest robot, the one with wheels for feet, is quite efficient. You need legs to traverse complex terrain. Adding wheels for efficiency after you've developed decent legs just makes sense.

[Animats]

The military version, the Legged Squad Support System, was tested by the USMC at Quantico. They decided not to buy it. Too noisy for combat, too hard to fix in the field, not that useful to a Marine squad.[1]

The US Army was also trying some exoskeleton designs. The Raytheon XOS [2] was quite capable but needed an external power cable. The Lockheed HULC [3] finally reached a self-powered configuration, but battery life was too short.

None of these will be fielded. Maybe the next generation.

The Army's next big "mobility" buy is a replacement for the HUMMV, an armored truck from Oskosh. Smaller than the MRAP, but a comparable level of protection. Boring, but useful.

[1] http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/12/22/marine-corps-s...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V87lSB5XWVs

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kat8I5UM_Vs

[ethbro]

Strapping a high-density power source to a man (or machine) in a bullet ridden environment sounds like a terrible idea.

I imagine we'll see progress on this front when there's a breakthrough there. Barring that, you get some analog of the rocket equation: power source + fuel requires armor (for survivability) which means more power and fuel is required, etc etc

[adrusi]

As the volume of the battery grows larger, the battery's mass grows cubically while the mass of the armor shielding it grows quadratically. It's nothing like the rocket equation problem.

[TeMPOraL]

I suppose you can cheat it this way: hide the power source behind just enough armor that when a soldier gets hit with something powerful enough to pierce it, he'll most likely be dead anyway.

Another avenue to cheat: put extra armor just around the fuel/power source.

[seanp2k2]

I've seen enough action movies to know that the future is nuclear fuel cells the size of a hydroflask.

[logfromblammo]

In future Boston, a miniaturized nuclear power cell may be able to power a whole building for 500 years, but it can only handle a mechanized exoskeleton for about 45 minutes.

[swampthinker]

And there is an additional settlement that needs saving?

[rangibaby]

> other avenue to cheat: put extra armor just around the fuel/power source.

Wouldn't that make it heavier and take away the advantage of having an exoskeleton in the first place?

I imagined something like the Soviet "Shtrafbat", battalions made up of prisoners and other undesirables.

Of couse the shtrafniks will die in a terrible conflagration when they bump their battery, but think of all the expensive equipment taxpayers can buy for them, and a use for the prison population! Of course the prisoners will be rented to the state for a nominal fee, and there will be compensation to PrisonCo when their property is damaged. It's a win-win-win!

[konceptz]

No arguments but payloads and ammo are also things that enter bullet ridden environments.

[chrisbennet]

Rifle ammo isn't explosive for the most part. For example, if you left it in a fire, it would cook off. The bullet would stay where it was more or less and the case would split open and fly a little ways.